The Chieftain

Back to the local chieftain story. I had a long chat with friends over the weekend why this chieftain would decide to stop owning a bread shop. Even though his bread shop is the only bread shop in the village.

Villagers have to buy bread from him. When there is another outfit trying to sell similar bread, the chieftain would exercise his chieftain power to stop the competition by raising the cost of another bread shop. Making his bread shop the most profitable.

His decision to sell the shop came 1 day after the bread shop ownership sanction ended. This raised speculation among the villagers. Some were outraged that he sold his outfit to an out-of-town chieftain (who also enjoys monopoly in his village). This out-of-town chieftain already bought a big bread shop down under called Otpus. Buying the only local bread shop, this gives out-of-town chieftain the ability to raise prices, change the recipe or even put in honest potion to find villagers' secrets (so villagers will talk in their sleep). For example, this out-of-town chieftain will get to know whether Waraphon's family plans to go to Timbuktu for vacation, he (OOT chieftain) can offer his travel agent service to W's family the next day. This gives OOT chieftain a sustainable competitive advantage.

But I think otherwise. If you were the chieftain, you have controlled 5,000-bread budget over period of 5 years. With typical bribery scene, as a chieftain, you should have made 500 bread on bribes. But you couldn't just show off 500 breads to villagers. So you had to hide 500 bread somewhere. Here comes the out-of-town chieftain, you could ask his help. Of course, you'll have to pass some profits to this OOT chieftain in the future.

In addition, as a chieftain, you have the power to sell the village's monopoly community stores (such as GATE, TTP to name a few). Since these community stores are monopoly - meaning there is only one in each respective market. Moreover, every villagers helped putting in money to build these community stores. However, as a chieftain, you could use the "inefficiency" as the key to sell these community stores. Now you know that you can sell these comm. stores, you have the money (5000 breads) that you ask your good friend OOT chieftain to keep.

Will you (as a chieftain) want to buy monopoly community stores if you have 5000 breads? Of course, every single human would want to. How could you "legally" get to your 5000 breads? So here comes the OOT chieftain, you just ask your OOT chieftain friend to act as if he's buying your monopoly bread shop. Then he can transfer "your" 73 breads to you, while he acts as if he owns the bread shop.

Voila, now you have 73 breads to buy community stores. Your supposedly "illegal" 73 breads became clean and disposible income.

You can never judget the book by the cover. You can never think what you are told to think (from the newspaper). If you keep reading, listening and thinking based on what you hear/see/read, you will never be a chieftain.

So start using your single most valuable resource today.

Have a nice brain day.

The other way to look at life - How-To

During the past couple of days, I'd have given a thought to two seperate issues. The first story was with a story published on pantip. The second was with friends of mine.

The first story is about a doctor who saved a pig from being slaughtered. This doctor was driving a car when he saw a pig fell off the truck. This pig was injured and it couldn't walk back to the back of the truck. So he offered to buy this pig and put it in his house. Later he found out that he could donate this pig to a monastery so the pig could have spent the rest of its life in a monastery far away. He and his girlfriend then proceeded to donate this pig to that monastery. However, he was still attached to the pig. Later he went back to the monastery to find that this pig was killed for meat the day he donated it. He felt he was betrayed so he started an internet discussion regarding this pig-killing monastery. He created hate e-mail and people started to forward his e-mails all over the country. Thousands of people were upset.

I have a different point of view. From the way I look at it, the monk did order the pig to be killed. This is not typical for a buddhist monk. However, it's not a far-fetched idea. Human race kill millions of animals everyday. This pig has to face its end at the holy place. So we have one wrong-doing monk and one angry doctor. This doctor (even though he already donated the pig) still has "ownership" feeling over the pig. This is not the right mindset. When you donate anything, your relationship with that thing must end. So this doctor should not feel that he still owns the pig.

So what do we have from this story? One wrong-doing monk who killed animal and One angry doctor. The doctor went on to write about the story to the public on the Internet. In buddhism, this doctor has created at least 10,000 angry people (2% of people who read this Internet site per day - this site has more than 500,000 readers per day). So if 1 of 10,000 angry people stop believing in Buddhism because of him. He already commited a bad karma without his knowledge. What if 10,000 angry people talk to their friends, this number multiplies very quickly. So the doctor has commited bad karma - much more than the monk - who ordered to kill a pig. Who knows what reasons that monk had when he ordered the execution?

The way i see is this:
1. The doctor committed bad karma
2. The monk committed wrong doing
3. The pig's karma designated that it had to be killed - no mattter the external factor - the doctor's help - can not change the outcome.

In summary, we can not change karma, we can only postpone. Maybe if I can, I'd like to suggest the doctor to:
1. Accept that he felt betrayed
2. Realize that he could only forgive the monk - the pig must die anyway - its death is caused by its karma
3. Realize that he can not change the pig's karma
4. Forgive the monk and let go the feeling
5. Continue to do good things
6. Let karma to work its magic with the monk - karma will eventually come back to the monk anyway

He should rather think this way. So he wouldn't create hate e-mails, heated discussion on the Internet board. He wouldn't make 10,000 people angry. He wouldn't make monks at these two monasteries uneasy. He could easily make 100 monks feeling bad.

So whenever you are in pain, anger, or uneasy feeling, you need to remember Buddha's teaching:
1. Pain
2. Realize that you're in pain
3. Think of the way to go out of pain
4. Move on and get rid of the pain

The second one is about the chieftain of a clan. This chief recently sold his bread shop to another chieftain of another clan for 73 breads. More on this later.

Hello! What do I know about life?

When i thought of starting a second blog called "Peter on Life". I asked myself "what do i qualify to write on life" when i'm a little bit past 30. Believe it or not, i've been to 5 continents during the past 11 years. Been travelling to problem regions namely Kosovo during the war time. Survived a double tragedy (death and cheat). In addition, face a lot of difficulties comparing to other 30-year-olds.

This blog will be my thoughts, my hopes, my fears, my book reviews, my perspective to the world. I'd like to write once a week.

This blog has nothing to do with "Peter on Storage".